you are confusing application toolkit with package manager.
Mac OS X (and, IIRC, NeXTstep) has a "package manager" for installing components that need to be in certain places (kernel extensions, drivers, etc), but most objects in a NeXTstep-style environment (especially those that a desktop environment uses) do not need to be managed. The toolkits (frameworks) treat bundles (applications, plugins, etc) as first class objects. Bundles contain all the information they need to interact with each other in a property list file in the Contents subdirectory.
you can probably create an all-in-one GNOME or KDE app.
You can wrap an application or a library in a bundle, and let LaunchServices know about it. It will be usable from apps that use the toolkit, but it won't automatically work the other way.
all-in-one apps cause severe problems in a CLI-oriented environment
I've been using them in a CLI-oriented environment for two and a bit years now, and they don't cause any more problems than GUI applications do in general.
There's command line tools in the toolkit. There's one called "open", that lets you launch the application associated with a file, or launch an application by name, using the LaunchServices database. There's other tools to inspect property lists. Non-GUI applications may be installed in the traditional tree, or they may be symlinked in. In practice it really works pretty well.
There's no need to "dist-mount" a bundle, a bundle is just a directory tree with specific files in standard places, like "whatever.app/Contents/Info.plist".
But wer'e talking about linux, not OSX.
That comment was about how I get a "menu interface" to my applications on OS X.
you must remember, however, that unlike in OSX, linux applications are installed in a disturuted manner, which makes it harder to do.
This has nothing to do with Linux, it has to do with the application toolkit. GNOME applications are installed in a distributed manner, whether they're installed via RPM on Red Hat or Fink on OS X. KDE applications are installed in a distributed manner, likewise. GNUstep, however, supports NeXTstep style packages just like OSX does.
you mean "put a drawer on the panel"
No, I mean put the folder in the dock. On OSX. This turns the folder into a menu when you right-click on it, or opens it as a folder when you left-click on it.
why an "applications" folder? why not have it the way it is with Mandriva (double click and a GUI package manager will install the package for you),
Because installers suck dirty swamp water through used oil filters. They suck hot road tar through clogged water pipes. They suck burning acid through living veins. They should not have to exist, and only exist because of historical accidents of OS design.
Whether you use drag-and drop or point-and-click or a command line is beside the point. The fact that the application is a single atomic object that you can back up (and know you've backed up), move to another computer, or otherwise manipulate... THAT is the key.
how else will we graphically access our apps, via icons on the desktop/panel?
I just put a directory in the dock, and right-click on that lets me select any of the applications under it.
The bit you're mising is that Mac OS X is a free UNIX based operating system. The kernel, Darwin, is free-as-in-speech and free-as-in-beer. In addition, substantial subsystems including "Webkit" (the core of the Safari web browser and Dashboard) have also been released as open-source software.
If they had used a Linux kernel with some proprietary code on top, as many embedded Linux system vendors have done, you would no doubt be cheering Apple on. Perhaps because the Mac OS X kernel's based on a less "GNU oriented" OS, we instead get people (apparently honestly) claiming that it's no different from Windows.
Apple's commitment to open source has been ridiculed far too often, and despite the ridicule they have not only continued to release source, they have added more all the time.
Every single application needs the same keyboard shortcuts, because I don't want to have to remember every developer's personal whim anymore.
The thing that makes open source UNIX look so very bad is how far Mac OS X still has to go in this area. Despite a long and well-intentioned set of Human Interface Guidelines there's still far too many application-specific "to do X you need to hold down command... no I mean option... while dragging the icon to the trash..." special cases.
For example, I can never remember whether I need to hold down shift, command, or option when double-clicking in Finder to force it to open a new window.
And going from one version of Safari to the next the shortcuts for the services changed, so instead of opening a URL I get a Google Search instead.
It's amazing that the people who cheer Dave Korn's remarks on Microsoft's "Korn Shell" alternative are mysteriously silent about Dave Korn's comments on Cygwin. You really need to look them up, because you seem to be making the same mistake.
Backslider! There is no purity in Linux! No true Free Operating System would permit proprietary binary drivers! Come back to the Hurd, abandon the tainted kernel!
All of these things happen when an overdose of Roentgen rays is given. Bombed children's hair falls out. That is natural because these rays are used often to make hair fall artificially and sometimes takes several days before the hair becomes loose
That's the scariest thing I've read so far, using hard radiation as a depilatory. Reminds me of the practice among alchemists of using liquid mercury as a purgative.
If youre runing production machines in this type of environment then forget about randome RPM problems. There just aren't any because you don't do anything that isn't 'standard'.
I tried using KDE. Requires too much horsepower from my late-90s laptop... might as well be running OS X. Gone back to Windowmaker.
the kernel is "asthmatic" and encumbers performance
Not as much as has been alleged. The big problem is the GUI design that requires lots of extra bitmap copies and compositing operations, even if you reduce the transparency/shadow effects to a minimum. Hey, look, Microsoft and the X11 folks are promising us eye candy too.
it is a botique product that has NO future with developing nations
No more than Windows is, and Microsoft's found the solution to that... complain about the piracy and make an obviously irrelevant response that keeps them from losing sales in the first world, while doing nothing to actually prevent unauthorized copying so they keep their market share up. Now they're moving to x86 it'll get all the "Pirate Domain" support Windows does.:)
The difference is that Enlightenment is all about wasteful eye-candy drivel, and Sawfish is about lean, mean, blindingly-fast power-user environment.
It's a window manager. It's not even a particularly small window manager, at that, but it's just a damn window manager. There's a billion window managers for UNIX, and the best I can say about any of them is some of them suck a bit less than others. Yeh, the OS X window manager sucks a but more than Windowmaker (the one I find to suck the least), but a window manager isn't nearly enough to make a difference between a "lean, mean, power user environment" and a, well, whetever a non-LMPUE might be.
You want a lean, mean, power user window manager, try wmx or wm2. Or Ratpoison.
Sure, I could relearn everything differently, just like I could...
I'm not asking you to do anything. I'm just telling you why I switched. Because OS X lets me do everything I was doing under X11, no reinvention necessary, PLUS it gives me new options.
But, yes, right now it's expensive. The Mac Tax is significant, I agree with that. If Apple doesn't do anything but change the CPU, and makes it hard to use Mac OS X on non-Apple machines, then nothing's going to change... I agree with that too. But the OS itself? It's good enough that if Apple were willing to risk everything and release "OS X for generic PCs" I think it'd send Microsoft scurrying for a new paradigm and Linux on the desktop would be rendered invisible instead of merely mostly irrelevant.
I would like to toss the whole "cyberspace with the same capabilities and limitations as the physical universe" trope on the bonfire as well. No more Neuromancer, no "black ice", no looking at computers online and seeing how cool and powerful they are by the kind of hole they make in cyberspace, no "travelling through" cyberspace. Not for anything outside videogames, anyway.
I think I tried Enlightenment once, about 8 years ago on Linux. It scarred me.
I personally run Sawfish, and have for years now.
I don't see any difference between the two. Sorry about that.
I basically agree that Apple's choices aren't the best. I would prefer it be more configurable. But given a choice between being able to configure five decent apps and a bunch of sucky ones to an incredibly minute degree under a window system that was originally designed as an experimental platform, and having a little less control over the UI but being able to find and buy apps that I actually enjoy using...?
I mean, I hate metal, I hate that iTunes uses metal, but it's still better than any other music player for Windows or Mac OS X that I've ever used, and I have NEVER run into a music player for either of these platforms that's as bad as XMMS... and XMMS is the least sucky music player available for open source UNIX by far.
That's the kind of difference in application quality you have to put up with once you leave the command line behind... and with Mac OS X I don't even have to leave the command line behind.
I can't help you with "eyecandy attention deficit syndrome". I'm not an eyecandy fan, I settled down on Windowmaker as my desktop on FreeBSD... and it's really eycandy-deprived. Sorry.
With OS X I can't spend hours and days tweaking things that don't matter. In exchange for that, I get an actual choice of multiple well-supported applications where the open source community can only provide one. At most. And that often poor.
Open source is great. I've been part of the open source community since before it was called the open source community... for that matter, since before RMS and Gosling had their tiff over Emacs.
But it's not the only model. Neither is commercial software the only model. Real choice needs an anvironment where all kinds of software development models can work together. And out of all the operating systems I've ever seen, only Mac OS X meets that standard.
Dozens of onboard scripting languages (Python, Perl, Ruby, Tcl, Java)
Mac OS X ships with perl, python, Tcl, PHP, Applescript, Javascript.
The ability to CUSTOMIZE THE WINDOWING ENVIRONMENT.
That way lies Enlightenment, and Enlightenment brings... suffering.
Seriously. Yeh, I though I'd really miss focus-follows-mouse, but I've adapted to that. Just about everything else you can do by tweaking the window manager is worthless, or worse than worthless. My window manager in UNIX is Windowmaker... which is a clone of the NeXTstep window manager.
The ability to install or build a kernel tailored to my environment...
I was doing that before Linux existed. Just because I'm using OS X on my desktop doesn't mean I use it on the server. Not that I use Linux there either, the Linux kernel configuration environment with its interactive scripts and other throwbacks to the '60s makes me want to puke.
Package management tools that are decades ahead of what OSX provides, which is to say... nothing.
That's because OS X uses a model that integrates the package concept into the OS and user interface, so packages stay bundled together and LaunchServices integrates them... and the only "package management tool" you need is "put the bundle there".
OSX has its niche
Desktops. There's no other desktop OS worth considering. Windows is for games. FreeBSD is for servers. Linux is for, um, slashdot users I guess.
What you don't understand is Linux/OSS is a superset of OS-X
Anonymous Coward: I suspect I've been writing open-source software for longer than you've been alive, so I don't think I've missed anything.
OS X is based on OSS, it runs all the OSS I've thrown on it, and it's got its own application base and capabilities. It's OS X that's the superset, not the other way around.
If you match things feature for feature both hardware and software the mac is typically cheaper.
You mean, if you take the Mac feature set as the requirements and try to produce exactly the same features on the PC, which I already suggested you might be doing? That's cheating, because by the time you do that you've now got features on the PC side you don't have on the Mac side, so to be fair you need to add THOSE as well. But now the balance has swung the other way...
The only way to do an apples-to-apples comparison is to select a feature set and build machines to fit it.
The xserve was 1K cheaper. (Mainly due to the cost of RH AS lic).
The only benefit to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux system is to help fund Linux development. I've spent weeks fighting RHN and RPMs and playung Hunt The Wumpus all over the internet trying to provide the customer who demanded Red Hat the same functionality I got from FreeBSD by typing "make install" under/usr/ports a few times.
So the Dell box was actually close to 2k cheaper, if I have my prices right.
See, that's the kind of cheating people always do in these comparisons. Now, I happen to believe the "Mac Tax" is worth it, but it's silly to claim it's not there.
What you call a dead end all in one I call the perfect machine for my dad and mom that will last them for 4-8 years.
I hope you're talking about a flat-panel iMac there, and not an eMac.
And the flat panel iMac's got about $500 worth of "Mac Tax" in it.
Slashdot Mirror
you are confusing application toolkit with package manager.
Mac OS X (and, IIRC, NeXTstep) has a "package manager" for installing components that need to be in certain places (kernel extensions, drivers, etc), but most objects in a NeXTstep-style environment (especially those that a desktop environment uses) do not need to be managed. The toolkits (frameworks) treat bundles (applications, plugins, etc) as first class objects. Bundles contain all the information they need to interact with each other in a property list file in the Contents subdirectory.
you can probably create an all-in-one GNOME or KDE app.
You can wrap an application or a library in a bundle, and let LaunchServices know about it. It will be usable from apps that use the toolkit, but it won't automatically work the other way.
all-in-one apps cause severe problems in a CLI-oriented environment
I've been using them in a CLI-oriented environment for two and a bit years now, and they don't cause any more problems than GUI applications do in general.
There's command line tools in the toolkit. There's one called "open", that lets you launch the application associated with a file, or launch an application by name, using the LaunchServices database. There's other tools to inspect property lists. Non-GUI applications may be installed in the traditional tree, or they may be symlinked in. In practice it really works pretty well.
There's no need to "dist-mount" a bundle, a bundle is just a directory tree with specific files in standard places, like "whatever.app/Contents/Info.plist".
But wer'e talking about linux, not OSX.
That comment was about how I get a "menu interface" to my applications on OS X.
Then that's Yahoo's responsibility, and Yahoo is who Paul should be complaining about.
you must remember, however, that unlike in OSX, linux applications are installed in a disturuted manner, which makes it harder to do.
This has nothing to do with Linux, it has to do with the application toolkit. GNOME applications are installed in a distributed manner, whether they're installed via RPM on Red Hat or Fink on OS X. KDE applications are installed in a distributed manner, likewise. GNUstep, however, supports NeXTstep style packages just like OSX does.
you mean "put a drawer on the panel"
No, I mean put the folder in the dock. On OSX. This turns the folder into a menu when you right-click on it, or opens it as a folder when you left-click on it.
why an "applications" folder? why not have it the way it is with Mandriva (double click and a GUI package manager will install the package for you),
Because installers suck dirty swamp water through used oil filters. They suck hot road tar through clogged water pipes. They suck burning acid through living veins. They should not have to exist, and only exist because of historical accidents of OS design.
Whether you use drag-and drop or point-and-click or a command line is beside the point. The fact that the application is a single atomic object that you can back up (and know you've backed up), move to another computer, or otherwise manipulate... THAT is the key.
how else will we graphically access our apps, via icons on the desktop/panel?
I just put a directory in the dock, and right-click on that lets me select any of the applications under it.
Carry on like this, and you turn into Amiga.
Apple's current sales are three times the highest the Amiga managed in its best year.
The bit you're mising is that Mac OS X is a free UNIX based operating system. The kernel, Darwin, is free-as-in-speech and free-as-in-beer. In addition, substantial subsystems including "Webkit" (the core of the Safari web browser and Dashboard) have also been released as open-source software.
If they had used a Linux kernel with some proprietary code on top, as many embedded Linux system vendors have done, you would no doubt be cheering Apple on. Perhaps because the Mac OS X kernel's based on a less "GNU oriented" OS, we instead get people (apparently honestly) claiming that it's no different from Windows.
Apple's commitment to open source has been ridiculed far too often, and despite the ridicule they have not only continued to release source, they have added more all the time.
More interestingly, will significant numbers of Linux users contributing useful work migrate?
I don't know how many, but it does happen.
Every single application needs the same keyboard shortcuts, because I don't want to have to remember every developer's personal whim anymore.
The thing that makes open source UNIX look so very bad is how far Mac OS X still has to go in this area. Despite a long and well-intentioned set of Human Interface Guidelines there's still far too many application-specific "to do X you need to hold down command... no I mean option... while dragging the icon to the trash..." special cases.
For example, I can never remember whether I need to hold down shift, command, or option when double-clicking in Finder to force it to open a new window.
And going from one version of Safari to the next the shortcuts for the services changed, so instead of opening a URL I get a Google Search instead.
But at least that works in most applications.
And you can install Cygwin on Windows too.
It's amazing that the people who cheer Dave Korn's remarks on Microsoft's "Korn Shell" alternative are mysteriously silent about Dave Korn's comments on Cygwin. You really need to look them up, because you seem to be making the same mistake.
Maybe. I know I was concerned about an explosion when I plugged my Microsoft Optical mouse into my Mac mini.
Backslider! There is no purity in Linux! No true Free Operating System would permit proprietary binary drivers! Come back to the Hurd, abandon the tainted kernel!
All of these things happen when an overdose of Roentgen rays is given. Bombed children's hair falls out. That is natural because these rays are used often to make hair fall artificially and sometimes takes several days before the hair becomes loose
That's the scariest thing I've read so far, using hard radiation as a depilatory. Reminds me of the practice among alchemists of using liquid mercury as a purgative.
If youre runing production machines in this type of environment then forget about randome RPM problems. There just aren't any because you don't do anything that isn't 'standard'.
Might as well be using Windows, then.
No, I'm not kidding.
KDE... KDE... KDE
:)
I tried using KDE. Requires too much horsepower from my late-90s laptop... might as well be running OS X. Gone back to Windowmaker.
the kernel is "asthmatic" and encumbers performance
Not as much as has been alleged. The big problem is the GUI design that requires lots of extra bitmap copies and compositing operations, even if you reduce the transparency/shadow effects to a minimum. Hey, look, Microsoft and the X11 folks are promising us eye candy too.
it is a botique product that has NO future with developing nations
No more than Windows is, and Microsoft's found the solution to that... complain about the piracy and make an obviously irrelevant response that keeps them from losing sales in the first world, while doing nothing to actually prevent unauthorized copying so they keep their market share up. Now they're moving to x86 it'll get all the "Pirate Domain" support Windows does.
What, me cynical?
The difference is that Enlightenment is all about wasteful eye-candy drivel, and Sawfish is about lean, mean, blindingly-fast power-user environment.
...
It's a window manager. It's not even a particularly small window manager, at that, but it's just a damn window manager. There's a billion window managers for UNIX, and the best I can say about any of them is some of them suck a bit less than others. Yeh, the OS X window manager sucks a but more than Windowmaker (the one I find to suck the least), but a window manager isn't nearly enough to make a difference between a "lean, mean, power user environment" and a, well, whetever a non-LMPUE might be.
You want a lean, mean, power user window manager, try wmx or wm2. Or Ratpoison.
Sure, I could relearn everything differently, just like I could
I'm not asking you to do anything. I'm just telling you why I switched. Because OS X lets me do everything I was doing under X11, no reinvention necessary, PLUS it gives me new options.
But, yes, right now it's expensive. The Mac Tax is significant, I agree with that. If Apple doesn't do anything but change the CPU, and makes it hard to use Mac OS X on non-Apple machines, then nothing's going to change... I agree with that too. But the OS itself? It's good enough that if Apple were willing to risk everything and release "OS X for generic PCs" I think it'd send Microsoft scurrying for a new paradigm and Linux on the desktop would be rendered invisible instead of merely mostly irrelevant.
I would like to toss the whole "cyberspace with the same capabilities and limitations as the physical universe" trope on the bonfire as well. No more Neuromancer, no "black ice", no looking at computers online and seeing how cool and powerful they are by the kind of hole they make in cyberspace, no "travelling through" cyberspace. Not for anything outside videogames, anyway.
I think I tried Enlightenment once, about 8 years ago on Linux. It scarred me.
I personally run Sawfish, and have for years now.
I don't see any difference between the two. Sorry about that.
I basically agree that Apple's choices aren't the best. I would prefer it be more configurable. But given a choice between being able to configure five decent apps and a bunch of sucky ones to an incredibly minute degree under a window system that was originally designed as an experimental platform, and having a little less control over the UI but being able to find and buy apps that I actually enjoy using...?
I mean, I hate metal, I hate that iTunes uses metal, but it's still better than any other music player for Windows or Mac OS X that I've ever used, and I have NEVER run into a music player for either of these platforms that's as bad as XMMS... and XMMS is the least sucky music player available for open source UNIX by far.
That's the kind of difference in application quality you have to put up with once you leave the command line behind... and with Mac OS X I don't even have to leave the command line behind.
I can't help you with "eyecandy attention deficit syndrome". I'm not an eyecandy fan, I settled down on Windowmaker as my desktop on FreeBSD... and it's really eycandy-deprived. Sorry.
With OS X I can't spend hours and days tweaking things that don't matter. In exchange for that, I get an actual choice of multiple well-supported applications where the open source community can only provide one. At most. And that often poor.
Open source is great. I've been part of the open source community since before it was called the open source community... for that matter, since before RMS and Gosling had their tiff over Emacs.
But it's not the only model. Neither is commercial software the only model. Real choice needs an anvironment where all kinds of software development models can work together. And out of all the operating systems I've ever seen, only Mac OS X meets that standard.
Dozens of onboard scripting languages (Python, Perl, Ruby, Tcl, Java)
Mac OS X ships with perl, python, Tcl, PHP, Applescript, Javascript.
The ability to CUSTOMIZE THE WINDOWING ENVIRONMENT.
That way lies Enlightenment, and Enlightenment brings... suffering.
Seriously. Yeh, I though I'd really miss focus-follows-mouse, but I've adapted to that. Just about everything else you can do by tweaking the window manager is worthless, or worse than worthless. My window manager in UNIX is Windowmaker... which is a clone of the NeXTstep window manager.
The ability to install or build a kernel tailored to my environment...
I was doing that before Linux existed. Just because I'm using OS X on my desktop doesn't mean I use it on the server. Not that I use Linux there either, the Linux kernel configuration environment with its interactive scripts and other throwbacks to the '60s makes me want to puke.
Package management tools that are decades ahead of what OSX provides, which is to say... nothing.
That's because OS X uses a model that integrates the package concept into the OS and user interface, so packages stay bundled together and LaunchServices integrates them... and the only "package management tool" you need is "put the bundle there".
OSX has its niche
Desktops. There's no other desktop OS worth considering. Windows is for games. FreeBSD is for servers. Linux is for, um, slashdot users I guess.
just put the email addresses you want to use in a comma separate list
That's great, but that list's several thousand elements long by now and there's another one every time I leave a message at another website.
Good point, but Mac hardware is "better"?
Not always.
Apple laptops are pretty crummy, for example. I'd take a Thinkpad over a Powerbook, if only it would run OS X.
What you don't understand is Linux/OSS is a superset of OS-X
Anonymous Coward: I suspect I've been writing open-source software for longer than you've been alive, so I don't think I've missed anything.
OS X is based on OSS, it runs all the OSS I've thrown on it, and it's got its own application base and capabilities. It's OS X that's the superset, not the other way around.
And having an OS that runs well is the whole point of running OS/X
I'be been running OS X on unsupported boxes, and I've been playing the find-a-driver game, and giving up hardware Apple no longer supports.
And Mac OS X with missing-driver hell is still light years ahead of Windows.
If you match things feature for feature both hardware and software the mac is typically cheaper.
/usr/ports a few times.
You mean, if you take the Mac feature set as the requirements and try to produce exactly the same features on the PC, which I already suggested you might be doing? That's cheating, because by the time you do that you've now got features on the PC side you don't have on the Mac side, so to be fair you need to add THOSE as well. But now the balance has swung the other way...
The only way to do an apples-to-apples comparison is to select a feature set and build machines to fit it.
The xserve was 1K cheaper. (Mainly due to the cost of RH AS lic).
The only benefit to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux system is to help fund Linux development. I've spent weeks fighting RHN and RPMs and playung Hunt The Wumpus all over the internet trying to provide the customer who demanded Red Hat the same functionality I got from FreeBSD by typing "make install" under
So the Dell box was actually close to 2k cheaper, if I have my prices right.
See, that's the kind of cheating people always do in these comparisons. Now, I happen to believe the "Mac Tax" is worth it, but it's silly to claim it's not there.
What you call a dead end all in one I call the perfect machine for my dad and mom that will last them for 4-8 years.
I hope you're talking about a flat-panel iMac there, and not an eMac.
And the flat panel iMac's got about $500 worth of "Mac Tax" in it.